Mirror, Mirror

My poor relationship with the mirror has been going on since I can remember. You could say we have had ups and downs over the years we have seen bullying, eating disorders and every end of the clothing size spectrum, we have shed many, many tears together and had very few laughs, I suppose when you really get to the crux of it – we have hated each other the whole time - and still do.

image stolen from here

It loves to point out my flaws and I love to let it, the more unstable I am emotionally the more faults it reveals until I find myself confronted with an ugly dysmorphic reflection of my outsides and the unfortunate far more true reflection of my insides.

 

I could probably count on one hand the number of times I have looked in the mirror and thought “Okay, I look pretty good right now” no, it’s normally a sailor-mouthed, hate filled, barrage of negative self-talk regarding my fatness, stretch marks, ugliness, skin tone, wrinkles, weird shaped toes, depressing sagginess in that place where my breasts used to be before four children sucked the life out of them…. ughh… so many imperfections, so little time.

Image stolen from here

My eating disorder is manifesting itself through severe binge eating at the moment which is terrifying for me and the vindictive mirror is having a field day with my insecurities, so while I would like to say that I am currently working on my relationship with my reflection, the truth is I am giving it the silent treatment by simply avoiding eye contact with anything shiny in fear that it will suddenly reveal that terrible secret I was keeping from myself about eating a Litre of chocolate ice cream and a family sized hot chips while nobody was home today.

I don’t believe we can ever truly like each other but I hope one day I will be able to come to an arrangement with the mirror, where we can be in the same room without anxiety and fear and I know that for this to happen I must first work on my eating disorder, I have to learn to let go of the control aspects which scares the living daylights out of me because I don’t want to get fat. again. I don’t want to be ok with being fat either, which sounds ridiculous because if I was ok with it then I would be okay with it and by definition it wouldn’t matter. 

I guess that I’m just frightened of myself as we are all frightened of things we don’t yet understand. Too many variables, too much change, no it feels much easier to stay in the abusive relationship I already have with myself than try stepping into the unknown world of potential care free happiness.

How do you get along with your reflection?